How To Protect Your Business Against Cyber Attacks

Cyber crime is growing exponentially, doesn’t matter how big or small your business is, you should be wary of cyber criminals. These digital criminals seem to have no set pattern or standards. In other words, if your organization has a head count of 200 or 20, you are equally in danger. Anyone can be attacked. Governments, large organizations, and even the small companies have fallen prey to these cyber predators, which are ever ready to cash in your sensitive information. It is on a constant rise and it is about time corporations take note of it.

The government and concerned authorities now clearly know what’s at stake when tackling with cyber bullies and they have launched initiatives such as, Notifiable Data Breach Legislation which compels businesses to communicate with customers about the “unauthorized access” to their personal information.

How To Protect Your Business Against Cyber Attacks

Data theft damages a business in multiple ways. Unfortunately, small companies or start-ups suffer a great deal if they have their data breached. This directly impacts loyalty factor of a customer. Customers will immediately switch to other brands if they feel their information is not safe, eventually resulting in loss of sales worth millions.

Big Or Small, No Business Is Safe

It is safe to say that no entity is fully safe from a potential and inevitable cyber attack. Hackers also have leveled up their potential. They have become smarter. They also tend to upgrade their tools with the money they earn, making them further invincible and untraceable.

Bottom line is, no company is too small or too big for a cyber criminal to target. It’s better to take safety precautions than suffering from what could be avoided.

Source: PWC

Ways To Protect Your Business From Cyber Attacks

It has been established that an organization’s employees are an easy target for hackers. They take advantage of the fact that companies take no such measures for the safety and protection of the employee data, leaving the information vulnerable to hack attack As a result, many businesses and especially startups are incorporating strict policies aiming to protect the sensitive employee data. Organizations have also provided their workers with training, enabling them to successfully distinguish between spam and authentic emails. Data backup is another way of data recovery if you lose it completely.

Other effective means of data protection are as follows:

VPN: A VPN can completely encrypt your data and protects your information like a shield from a breach. It also makes you anonymous while using a public WiFi network, giving you complete safety from being traced. Since smartphones have become an integral part of business communication, they are an added source of risk. VPNs can provide security and privacy for smartphones too, allowing protected surfing on the move.

Firewall: Firewalls prevent unauthorized access to classified documents by acting like a wall between the system and the trespassers. It allows the flow of data only between those computers which are verified. The firewall of a computer, if activated, reduces the security risk and amplifies the confidentiality of the data, by monitoring traffic back and forth. Firewalls also avert responding to ping calls from hackers which they use to trap their targets.

Anti-Virus: Anti-virus software fights off hackers, spyware, and viruses with its innovative features such as anti-spyware, antispam, anti-phishing, and data backup technologies. To battle with the sophisticated cyber criminals of today, such anti-virus software is a must.

DDoS protection: DDoS attacks are capable of reducing the service performance and in some cases, can even shut down a website for a short while. DDoS are a continuous threat business and their online presence and tools such as Incapsula, Akamai, CloudFlare or Radware are used to mitigate DDoS attacks.

SSL: Secure Sockets Layer, known as SSL, establishes an encrypted connection between your server and browser. This allows the transfer of data without any risk of data tampering, hack, breach or forgery. It is highly recommended that your web server is SSL certified to eliminate any chances of becoming a cyber crime victim.

Protecting yourself from cybercrime and hackers is a small yet a highly essential step towards achieving growth as data breaches can hinder your growth and hurt your credibility in the industry. Therefore, improving your security measures against cyber attacks should be goal number 1.

What other strategies are companies’ applying to ensure their data is safe and secure from cyber criminals? Enlighten us with your comments below!